Things look bleak for bank tenants, because banks make bigger profits from selling mortgages than from collecting rents on low-income properties. But in New England, people are coming together to confront banks and, in many cases, they are winning. The cost of contested evictions is forcing banks to accede to tenants’ demands to stay in their homes, while the increasing number of bank tenants fighting eviction is developing into a movement. People are turning to each other for solidarity in direct actions to defend their homes and to make their voices heard.

The Vermont Workers' Center (VWC) opened the doors to its first office space in the spring of 1998. The mission of the center reads: "We seek an economically just and democratic Vermont in which all residents have living wages, decent health care, childcare, housing and transportation. We work to build a democratic, diverse movement of working Vermonters that is locally focused and coordinated on a statewide basis. We work with organized labor in moving towards economic justice and in strengthening the right to organize. We are committed to taking action on the full range of issues that concern working people, and to building alliances nationally and internationally." The VWC seeks to build an effective and meaningful labor movement within the particularities of Vermont.